Recipe for royal scones turns up the heat on great cream tea debate
WHEN the royal pastry chefs shared their recipe for the Queen’s favourite scones, it was merely meant to be a gesture of goodwill for curious home bakers.
But the Royal family has inadvertently been dragged into the most vicious of debates, after footage showed the royal chefs unmistakably applying cream to the scones before jam.
The recipe, used for the Queen’s garden parties, followed the Devon method of scone construction − cream first, and then a dollop of jam.
The fierce rivals of Cornwall traditionally use jam and then cream.
Fans of the Devonian method yesterday hailed their victory, claiming the royal recipe as evidence the debate was settled once and for all.
The list of ingredients also included eggs − a further divisive topic among home bakers as some consider them essential to the scones’ fluffiness but others deem superfluous. Mary Berry uses eggs, while her fellow TV cook Delia Smith’s plain scones go without.
The royal pastry chefs offered the public the opportunity to recreate the treats at home as a way of marking the Queen’s garden parties which have had to be cancelled this year.
In a possible attempt to avoid controversy the method states that sultanas are “optional” and the finished scones should be served with “jam and clotted cream” without saying which to apply first. But the photograph − of a scone spread with cream, then with jam − left no room for misunderstanding and did not go unnoticed on social media.
“Shame you put the jam and cream on the wrong way round, these would have looked perfect!” one Instagram user wrote on the Royal family account.
“Jam first,” said another. “The Duke & Duchess of Cornwall would, I hope, be appalled by the photo.”
“Got it wrong again,” sighed a third.
Others took heart. “I don’t think it can get any more official than that, can it?” said one Devonian devotee. “One cannot argue with the Queen.” The jam-or-cream debate is well-known to the Royal family, with the Prince of Wales, who also holds the title of Duke of Cornwall, once quizzing a small boy with a jovial “have you got that the right way round?” after seeing him eat a scone with cream first.
As the Duke of Cambridge made his historic trip to Jerusalem in 2018 − the first official visit by a member of the Royal family − his arrival was marked with a pile of freshly baked scones at his hotel. “We heard that there’s a big debate in England about whether you put the cream or the jam on first,” said the hotel’s director of operations. “So we’ll leave them to the side and let the Prince decide.”
Darren Mcgrady, a chef who worked for the Royal family from 1982 to 1993, has previously insisted that the Queen “always had homemade Balmoral jam first with clotted cream on top at Buckingham Palace garden parties in the Royal tea tent and all Royal tea parties”.
The Royal family Instagram specified that guests at each of the four garden parties held every year consumed more than 27,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and 20,000 slices of cake.
‘Shame you put the jam and cream on the wrong way round, these would have looked perfect’
Few things are as controversial as scones. The British can’t even agree how to pronounce them. The word was first used by the Scots, but the cakes were not named after the palace, nor vice versa. Now the Queen has kindly given us a royal pastry cook’s recipe, since no one will be enjoying one at a Buckingham Palace garden party, cancelled like so much. The royal recipe includes a couple of eggs. Nothing wrong with eggs. Mary Berry makes scones with eggs. On the other hand, Delia Smith does not, and nor do many sconefanciers. This egg controversy makes the jam-or-cream-first divide look like a bakers’ bunfight. Eggs are for softies, the eggless faction says. Anyway don’t cream and jam call for plain scones, with no sultanas? Yet everyone from Monarch to child likes making scones – once you find the flour.